Prinzregententheater
Angelica – Adela Zaharia
Rodomonte – Edwin
Crossley-Mercer
Orlando – Mathias Vidal
Medoro – Dovlet Nurgeldiyev
Licone – Guy de Mey
Eurilla – Elena Sancho Pereg
Pasquale – David Portillo
Alcina – Tara Erraught
Caronte – François Lis
Gabi and Heiko Herz – Heiko
Pinkowski, Gabi Herz
Axel Ranisch (director)
Falko Herold (designs)
Magdalena Padros Celada (choreography)
Magdalena Padros Celada (choreography)
Michael Bauer (lighting)
Rainer Karlitschek (dramaturgy)
Munich Chamber Orchestra
Statisterie and Opera Ballet of
the Bavarian State Opera
Ivor Bolton (conductor)
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| Gabi and Heiko Herz (Heiko Pinkowski, Gabi Herz), Angelica (Adela Zaharia) Images: © Wilfried Hösl |
Should you not like
eighteenth-century opera very much, if at all, and should you have no or little
interest in Haydn either, this may have been the production for you. The
fundamental premise of Axel Ranisch’s staging of Orlando Paladino seems to have been that this was a work of little
fundamental merit, or at least a work in a genre of little such merit, and that
it needed the help of a modern medium – perhaps, it might even be claimed, an
equivalent medium – to speak to a contemporary audience. Speak to the audience
in Munich’s Prinzregententheater it certainly seemed to – rightly or wrongly. I
could only wish that both the work and those of us in the audience who thought
otherwise had not been treated with such condescension. That may sound reactionary.
Perhaps indeed it is; perhaps all that matters is that those many people who
enjoyed such an ‘entertainment’, to use a properly eighteenth-century word, did
indeed enjoy it. Perhaps. Let me, however, try to explain why I found this, much
fine singing notwithstanding, a somewhat dispiriting experience.
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| Alcina (Tara Erraught) and Pasquale (David Portillo) |
No one, I think, would claim
Nunziata Porta to be one of opera’s greatest librettists; this is not a Da
Ponte, a Wagner, or a Hofmannsthal. Nor indeed a Metastasio. However, his
libretto here is, by the same token, likely to be underestimated, precisely
because of where his talents lay. His principal occupation at Esterháza was to
adapt texts, including provision of insertion arias. (If you do not know any of
Haydn’s, for obvious reasons far less widely known than Mozart’s, then they are
well worth discovering.) And that is what he did here, on a larger scale, with Orlando Paladino, helping Haydn create a
rather extraordinary work, a dramma
eroicomico after Ariosto. Its skill lies not just in parodying Ariosto, indeed
not primarily in that at all, but in permitting Haydn to do so and indeed to
parody much else besides: often wryly, subtly, sometimes more overtly – here,
at least in one particular instance, in Pasquale’s ‘Ecco spanio’, Ranisch worked
highly successfully with libretto and
music. Otherwise, I am afraid, far too little of that came through – which was
surely something a skilled production might have seen as its purpose or at
least a good part of it.
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| Alcina and Angelica |
Yes, one might respond, but
what if an audience does not understand the conventions of late-ish
eighteenth-century opera seria? Do we
not need to find a way of leading many listeners in? We probably do, or at
least in certain circumstances it might be a good idea. (Heaven forfend we
might actually expect some work from an audience; nevertheless, if I do not
read Russian, I do not claim the problem to lie in Pushkin.) A similar problem,
after all, seems often to be experienced with Così fan tutte, which very few seem to understand – or, more to the
point, take the trouble to try to understand. (Sometimes it is not ‘all about
you’.) By all means, though, lead us in, show us what the opera is or might be
about. Ranisch, however, seemed to have no interest whatsoever in doing so. Not
unlike Christof Loy in his unforgivable Salzburg Frau ohne Schatten, albeit less aggressively, the message seemed to be: ‘forget
about this; I do not like this story very much, so here is another one’.
Alas, Ranisch’s new story seems
to me only slightly less banal than Loy’s. For all the filmic creativity –
undeniable in its way, if hardly groundbreaking – what we have ultimately is a
new, less than captivating, tale of a married couple who own a cinema. One of
them is at least partly gay and fantasises about the handsome Rodomonte (or
perhaps the actor/singer who plays him). When technical problems cause an
explosion in the cinema, he takes the opportunity to wander into the scenes on
screen to learn a bit more about himself. A huge amount of silly running
around, pulling faces, and so on, detracts entirely from the opera and at best
has one wonder what on earth is going on. Now there may well have been a way,
even within this particular metatheatrical framework, to engage with the work,
to do more of what I have suggested it might. It really does not seem, though,
to happen here. A pair of actors, ‘Gabi and Heiko Herz’, seem the most honoured
here. Ironically, however, the banality of their story, the striking Cinema Paradiso homage in Falko Herold’s
designs notwithstanding, throws one’s attention back towards the singing, if
only out of desperation. We end up with another tired old cliché, that
eighteenth-century opera other than Mozart’s is ‘really’ only about singing. Orlando Paladino and Haydn thus found
themselves doubly damned.
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| Medoro (Dovlet Nurgeldiyev) and Angelica |
Such might have been less the
case, had it not been for Ivor Bolton’s rigid, often hard-driven conducting,
which paid little attention, if any, to Haydn’s harmonic rhythm, living if
indeed it lived at all only in the moment – perhaps not so ill-suited a complement
to the production. The playing of the Munich Chamber Orchestra was in itself
excellent, however. One longed for it to be let off its leash, though, not
least for the strings to be permitted greater vibrato. There seemed little
doubt that they longed for that too. Nevertheless theirs was fine playing,
woodwind solos especially joyous. For the real thing, though, turn on record to
Antal Doráti – or even, should this be your
real thing and you can somehow stand the weird perversities, to Nikolaus
Harnoncourt. Those perversities may eclipse formal understanding, or at least
the communication thereof, but at least they seem less generated on auto-pilot.
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| Rodomonte (Edwin Crossley-Mercer) and Heiko Herz |
It was, then, to recapitulate –
more of such formal understanding from the conductor, please! – from the
singers that considerable pleasure and insight was to be gleaned. Mathias Vidal
as Orlando trod a fine line, sensitively and stylishly, between bravado and
acknowledged weakness. So indeed did all the male singers; such, not without a
pinch of what we might anachronistically think feminism, is indeed the point. Edwin
Crossley-Mercer’s diction was not always clear as it might have been,
especially in so small a theatre; however, his dark tone proved full of allure –
increasingly compromised allure. Dovlet Nurgeldiyev, for me one of the true
discoveries of the evening, offered almost heartbreaking tonal beauty, whilst
also making as much of the words as the production permitted. Likewise his
intended, Adela Zaharia. David Portillo, a supremely versatile singer, finely
attuned both to line and style, impressed greatly as Pasquale; his
aforementioned aria was probably the highpoint of the entire evening. Elena
Sancho Pereg, as Eurilla, proved very much his equal: a fine foil, but also a
spirited character in her own right. Tara Erraught’s rich mezzo Alcina left one
longing for more. It was she, above all, who brought moments of true drama to
proceedings. Perhaps she, instead, should have been directing and/or conducting.
